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For decades, string theory promised a “theory of everything” that described all particles and forces as tiny vibrating strings. Physicists hoped it could also solve one of the field’s deepest problems: reconciling quantum mechanics with gravity. But as string theory grew increasingly elaborate—and experimentally unreachable—many physicists lost hope. Now,... show more

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There Is No Final Theory of Everything I think a theory of everything is perhaps not the most fruitful way of thinking about science... It is my philosophical position that for any theory, no matter how complete it looks, we may be able to find problems in it, and these problems will lead to something else. I think there are different levels of explanations, maybe infinitely many. And we keep going from one to another by understanding things more and more. I like this more open-ended way of thinking about science and physics. We just keep digging, and sometimes we find a deeper level of explanation that brings about more unification. In this view, there will always be something to work on. The idea of a [final] theory of everything suggests a sense of closure. ~Conjecture Institute Senior Scientist Chiara Marletto with Curt Jaimungal

There Is No Final Theory of Everything I think a theory of everything is perhaps not the most fruitful way of thinking about science... It is my philosophical position that for any theory, no matter how complete it looks, we may be able to find problems in it, and these problems will lead to something else. I think there are different levels of explanations, maybe infinitely many. And we keep going from one to another by understanding things more and more. I like this more open-ended way of thinking about science and physics. We just keep digging, and sometimes we find a deeper level of explanation that brings about more unification. In this view, there will always be something to work on. The idea of a [final] theory of everything suggests a sense of closure. ~Conjecture Institute Senior Scientist Chiara Marletto with Curt Jaimungal

Conjecture Institute

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Deep learning works extraordinarily well. And we still largely don't know why. A new paper from Jamie Simon, Daniel Kunin, and 12 co-authors argues that a scientific theory of deep learning is emerging, and coins a name for the emerging field: learning mechanics. We sat down with Jamie and Dan on Generally Intelligent to talk about what a physics of deep learning would actually look like, why now, and what's left to figure out. 3:05 Learning mechanics as the physics to mechanistic interpretability's biology 4:13 Why deep learning needs a theory 7:07 Why deep learning is uniquely hard to engineer 12:11 How a week in the woods became a paper 25:59 The barrier to theory isn't opacity, but complexity 36:26 Deep learning's first gas law 47:22 Why more particles makes the problem easier 56:22 The discretization hypothesis 1:01:50 The strongest signal that a compact theory exists 1:05:07 The Platonic Representation Hypothesis 1:15:41 Why learning mechanics and mech interp need each other 1:25:29 Theory as safety infrastructure

Imbue

18,159 views • 4 months ago

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63,981 views • 9 months ago

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Curt Jaimungal

15,453 views • 4 months ago